A Year to Change: Conversations with women on choice, connections, and clarity in midlife

Reporting on the more geekish side of this…
We’ve submitted the feed to iTunes and Podcast Alley!

We’re excited to get this show on the REAL road, not just to our own personal A list of friends and family.

Welcome world.

Getting the colonoscopy is on my “To Do” list for this year.  And yes, I’ve been putting this off longer than the American Cancer Society says I should. 

I’m not Katie Couric, so they’ll be no live streaming video here on this blog.  Also no photos or general whining.  And no vivid word pictures, either.  I’ll just check it off the list when it’s done and note same here.

It’s enough to say that I have now scheduled the colo for about 6 weeks hence.  I’ll be the first appointment of that day at an “endoscopy center” - never to be confused with an outpatient center at The Hospital.  Clearly colonoscopies (sp?) are such a growth industry that they have their own facilities now. 

This is, I suppose, another example of Baby Boomers and their endless contributions to a burgeoning economy as a result of our aging body parts.

I’m in California for a few days.  Things really are different here.  I watched my friend have a Thai massage and I got some interesting advice from the woman who did the work.

She says, “If you want to change, you will. If you don’t want to change, you won’t.”

So what is the magic pill, the button, the miracle, that will make me know that the change I’m talking about is necessary, right and good?  What will make me quit talking and do the thing?

We talked about that little sort of “mother tone” of judgment in my head –  that voice that really means “you better….”
But that wasn’t in her voice.  For her it was just a statement of fact.  People just do what they want to do. I do know that’s true, especially for me!

Her experience with aging parents gave her a glimpse into her future that did not include strong and independent people. She didn’t want that life. “I want to be able to open jars when I’m 90.”

In my experience old people (OK, oldER people – my mother would not want to be said to be OLD!)  Let me start again: the next generation of people in my family did what they wanted to be doing, pretty much until they died.  So  I don’t have her model of frail old people to use as an anchor in my future.  They won’t be the compelling picture that gets me moving toward change.

And while I have reason to believe that I’m  less fit now than I was 20 years ago, and I have reason to believe that without any change, I’ll be worse off at the end of the next 20 years, I don’t necessarily think that will be a bad place — even if it should be! Getting old does not seem scary to me.

So I’m thinking, maybe I don’t want to make my changes clearly enough.

It’s not about badly enough.. just clearly enough.  What really is on the other side of diet and exercise?

If I don’t know what I’ll get from changing my life, if I don’t even know what I want from changing my life, then why bother to do any work to make the change?

In terms of weight and exercise, if there is no specific reward on the other side of the experience, it’s easy to put off the doing. I’m guessing there will be no reason to maintain the adjustment.  It won’t stick.  And I hate doing work for no good reason.

So I’m working now on figuring out my own compelling reason for change.  What will I really get when I can trust my body to do what I want it to do?

I’m thinking  her reasons. That’s why her health things are working.. ok, maybe not the cigarettes.. but the other stuff.

This morning, I read the obituary of a woman I do not know. Edda M. Jakab.

It was the caption under her picture that drew me in.

“At age 17, she took a day off from high school to wed, returning to class the next day as a married woman.”

She died at age 61 still married to that man. Her husband said she was “fond of finding beauty in the ‘necessary journey’ – an Emersonian phrase that captured the long road she traveled.”

The moment of decision might well be an on or off sort of place, but the change I’m interested in is long term change — better diet, better health, better connection … for the rest of my life not just for this second.

I think we all understand, intellectually, that change is a process, a journey. And, yes of course, the journey of a thousand miles begins with one step… right, right, right.

But, in fact, that’s just a beginning.

Change happens whether we choose it or not. We get older, things happen to us and to others that require adjustments. But that change might be more of the kind that gets me somewhere, just not necessarily where I want to be.

And I’m 50. I get to choose! For cryin’ out loud!

So what I’m struggling with in my personal journey is making the right choice about where I want to go.

My acupuncturist reminds me that I don’t have to make a single choice for all eternity. I just have to make a choice — from the hundreds of ideas I have –  for right now. Choose something for which I have passion and the rest of the stuff will sort of find its own place.

How are you figuring out where you want to go?

If you have even an inkling of an idea, I’d sure like to hear it.

Thanks.

Once upon a time when I was revising my resume, I put in for a life goal: to be rich and famous, famous first. My DearHusband said I couldn’t do that. Employers just wouldn’t get the joke. But I want people to know who I am and what I do. And I thought it would be great fun. I still think it would be great fun.

But yesterday I realized the one question I never actually answered is this:

What do you want to be famous FOR?

Sheesh, I’m really not sure. I have lots of ideas, lots of possibilities. But pick one and make a plan to have it happen…. Yea…that’s where I seem to get stuck.

I’ve signed up to be part of Andrea Lee’s Multiple Streams of Coaching Income club. The first think I have to do is make a post of my commitments. That means I have to choose at least one thing I want to work toward this year.

I have to say one thing I want to get know now for.
And so, I’m stuck.

And you think that You’re having a hard time managing change?

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